Standby Power – leaky electricity

All those devices on stand-by, like your microwave, DVD player and TV, are idol using power even when they’re not in use. The typical microwave uses more power in stand-by then when in use. Sure, when it’s cooking something it uses 100 times the amount of energy that it takes to power the digital clock. However, you’re cooking only 1% of the time and the digital clock always running.

According to the Ecomomist

…(A) study which estimated that standby power accounted for approximately 5% of total residential electricity consumption in America, “adding up to more than $3 billion in annual energy costs”. According to America’s Department of Energy, national residential electricity consumption in 2004 was 1.29 billion megawatt hours (MWh)—5% of which is 64m MWh. The wasted energy, in other words, is equivalent to the output of 18 typical power stations.

It turns out that the 5% was an estimation. When they actually went into homes and tested the amount of power being used by devices in standby mode — the numbers ranged from 7% to 13% for a typical western household! Imagine that, up to 13% of the electricity in America is being used while nobody is using the devices.